


Written in the Constitution of the Age

by Sineala



Series: These Things They Misname Empire [1]
Category: The Eagle | The Eagle of the Ninth (2011)
Genre: Collars, Community: ninth_eagle, Depression, Gen, Slavery, Suicidal Thoughts, Threats of Violence
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-08-27
Updated: 2013-08-27
Packaged: 2017-12-24 19:24:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,155
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/943730
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sineala/pseuds/Sineala
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Having tried to run away, Esca the gladiator is returned to Beppo, and the arena's slave-master inflicts a punishment that, for Esca, is the worst thing possible.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Written in the Constitution of the Age

**Author's Note:**

> For the third year of the Ninth_Eagle Fanmedia Challenge, Round 4, inspired by the pictures of the birdcage and the writing-tablet. (The title is from Bruce Cockburn's "Pacing the Cage.") This is kind of a prequel to [They Make a Desolation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/824361), though you don't need to have read that to read this, and vice versa. (They aren't really connected, except thematically, but they feel related in my head.) Fair warning: it is pretty much the same level of Horribly Depressing And Angsty.

_I belong to Beppo_ , the little tag said. _Hold me, because I flee._

Not that Esca could read it, but that was what Beppo had told him it said, so that was really all that mattered.

The smith held the tag and the halves of the iron collar in his great scarred hands. Shaking his lank hair out of his eyes, he looked up at Beppo, asking for permission. For clarification. "Is it that you want a collar on him permanently?"

Esca imagined the iron, hot from the forge, inches from his neck; he imagined the smith welding the horrible thing closed. The red-hot bar would be on his skin, if he moved, or if the smith's hand slipped. They would not care if they branded him at the same time. He was only a thing, a possession.

But Beppo shook his head, and Esca hated himself for the instant, tiny rise of relief within himself, like the cresting of the smallest wave. Still, he could not be happier; there was nothing left in him to feel anything more than that.

"No," Beppo said, "I don't want the crowd to see it. We have to be able to remove it before he fights."

And it was plain enough, then, why Beppo had refrained from branding him, from collaring him for good, even though he had tried to run. It was not because he was kind. It was because it looked bad in the arena. Oh, an ordinary beating was acceptable, of course; any slave had scars. But a slave with _fugitivus_ written across his very face -- why, that said that he had fought back, and not the way that the crowd liked to see. It was well enough to want your freedom, but you had to want it the way the men of the arena said you did: you had to fight by their rules, play their games, until they deigned to put the wooden sword in your hands. If they ever did.

You could not take your own freedom, yourself. You could not run. And Romans did not like to be reminded that you wanted to, not when they had come to the sands to escape their cares, to be entertained by your suffering. They liked to pretend that you had accepted this.

The smith set the pieces of the collar aside and scratched thoughtfully at his stubbled jaw. "I can modify something for him," he said, "but, so you know, if it has to come off regularly there isn't anything I can sell you that he won't be able to get out of himself."

"He'll keep it on." A blithe assurance.

The smith, understandably, looked a little skeptical at the thought that Beppo could command compliance from a man who had already been a runaway. "As you say." He stood up and went to the chest in the corner of the shop. "I will just find a few things, and you can see which you like better." There came the sound of metal clanking hollowly.

Abruptly Beppo leaned down, pitching his words for Esca's ears only. His breath in Esca's face reeked of soured wine. "You may be a fighter, boy," he murmured, "but you don't need your tongue to fight. Act up and I'll cut it out of your mouth. And don't think I'll stop there, eh?" His hand gripped Esca's thigh like a vise, drifted higher up his leg, and stopped, offering the crude suggestion of future maiming. He didn't need to say it aloud.

Esca swallowed. "Yes, _domine_."

He knew then that they had broken him profoundly. Not to submission and obedience, as one breaks a horse, as one tries to break a slave, but something far worse had shattered within him, something even more integral to himself.

"Good boy." Chuckling, Beppo stood up, turning to the smith. "Oh, have you got something already? Perfect."

With Beppo standing in the way, Esca couldn't see what the smith had, even if he cared to look. He didn't. It would be all the same. They would shackle him and they would collar him like a beast. It was only his body, worth nothing to him, no longer his own. It had not been his for seven years. He realized that now.

"The tag can be made fast about one of the ends if I clamp it a little tighter," came the smith's dubious voice, "if that's what you want. The thing is really more like an ornament than a collar; most people wouldn't choose it for their slaves, sir."

"It is exactly what I want," said Beppo, with an awful, exulting glee, and when he turned back, stepping away, Esca could see the sick appreciation in his eyes. "Won't you enjoy it, slave?"

Then he saw what the smith had in his hands. 

_No._

Esca was already kneeling in the dirt, but even so all balance was gone from him. Trembling, he put his head between his chained wrists, his breathing fast and shallow, and in the back of his mouth he tasted bile and blood.

"Ah, you won't even look at it?" asked Beppo, cruel, mocking, and a hand knotted in his hair, dragging his head back. "I think you should admire it."

It was a warrior's torc.

It was not the one Esca had once worn, in another life; that had been wrought of shining gold, with hounds decorating the finials. This one was of some cheaper, duller metal, plain at the ends but worked all over with a twining pattern, like a warrior's ink. It too had been stolen from a man as he lay on the battlefield, dead or dying, the very same way that Esca's had been stolen from him. 

Calleva was still a British town at its heart, and the townspeople would recognize such a torc. The gladiators would recognize it. _Here is a chieftain's son_ , the torc would say, and the tag would have its own message: _And here he is, a slave, bound and broken, allowing the Romans to do this to him._

Everyone would see it, and even if they did not know him for Cunoval's son, even if they could not read the Latin words on the tag, they would know the story of it.

He would shame his clan. He would shame his father.

He had no choice.

"I own you, slave," Beppo said, very very quietly. And, oh, he knew exactly what this was doing to him. "Rome owns you. Remember that."

The only way to run now was to give up his body. To stop fighting for it. To leave it behind. He imagined stepping into the arena and throwing his weapons down. His opponent would have his life from him. There were no other choices. Not any longer. There was nothing else left.

Esca shut his eyes and bowed his head as the torc settled about his throat.


End file.
